With four races sailed and no score outside the top five, Ergin Imre's Turkish-flagged Provezza leads Puerto Portals 52 SUPER SERIES Sailing Week with a 14-point aggregate.
The team, guided by the Argentinian afterguard pairing of tactician Cole Parada and strategist Santi Lange — who first won together on these same Bay of Palma waters back in 2017 — sit six points clear of the chasing pack.
Tuesday's opener brought the Bay of Palma at its most awkward: light, shifting breeze under grey skies. Wednesday saw a welcome return of sunshine and with it the classic Palma sea breeze, peaking at 16 knots in a glorious first race. High cloud and building thunderstorms then sucked the life out of conditions, forcing the race committee to shorten Race 4 at the second windward mark.
Provezza's approach has been textbook grand prix sailing — disciplined starts, measured strategies, exploiting wind bends without overcommitting to the corners. In a 14-boat fleet where, as Parada noted, even a seventh or eighth now represents a solid result, their consistency stands out sharply.
"We're very happy at the moment — it's as if everything is falling into place at just the right time," said Parada. "Santi and our navigator Nacho Postigo are making some spot-on calls, and both the boat and the crew are performing very well."
The day's most emphatic recovery came from Andrea Lacorte's Italian entry Alkedo Vitamina, which bounced back from two ninths on Tuesday with a double bullet to move up to second. Tactician Cameron Appleton credited disciplined starting — specifically dominating the pin end and being last into the left — as the decisive factor, backed by a winter refit that added ballast and a new headstay.
"Sometimes you have to remember that what you are doing is quite good," said Appleton. "We did a lot of things really well yesterday and did not get a good day out of it. Today we kept prioritising the starts."
Tak Okura's Sled, the 2021 champions, hold third on the same 20-point aggregate as Alkedo, though their day was compromised when Paprec closed the door on them at the top of the second beat in Race 3, costing them a potential top-four finish.
The hardest luck story of the day belonged to Sweden's Trinity Racing. After winning Race 2 on Tuesday to lie third overnight, the new team suffered a main halyard failure before Race 3 and could not start. A second self-inflicted problem in Race 4 left them ninth. Tactician Ed Baird was candid: "We had a couple of self-inflicted issues today." They will regroup.
Racing resumes Thursday at midday, with thunderstorms and rain in the forecast.
Leaderboard after four races
After a 14-year absence, one of offshore racing's most storied team regattas returns to Porto Cervo this summer as the Range Rover Sardinia Cup runs from May 31 – June 6 at the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda.
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